GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 345103
Automatically search for duplicates as part of bug submission process
Last modified: 2006-11-05 23:12:22 UTC
Please describe the problem: I *always* search for bugs before filing a bug report. I am a software developer myself, and I understand the pain, frustration, and time wasted over duplicate bug reports. Yesterday, I performed a (short bug) search for "terminal size remeber" No bugs found, so I went ahead and filed a new bug: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=345054 I get an email that its (very rightly) a duplicate of http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88991 Expected results (or my opinion of expected results), when I search for words, I should get all bug reports containing those words. Perhaps this was caused just because the original bug was closed. I think a "short bug search" should include closed bugs too (if thats the case), after all, its the first line of defence against dup bugs... Steps to reproduce: Actual results: Expected results: Does this happen every time? Other information:
Actually, I had an alternate idea in mind -- automatically do a search when users are submitting a bug, show the user the 10 most closely related comments, and ask them if the bug they want to submit is the same as one of the bugs in the list. This would use http://bugzilla.gnome.org/dupfinder/simple-dup-finder.cgi (perhaps modified or fixed up a bit; it's kind of new), which is what I used to determine your bug report was a duplicate. Anyway, if the user determines their bug is a duplicate then the bug doesn't get filed, otherwise it does. That also has the advantage that users don't have to do a separate search. And it means that the separate search can default to looking in open bugs, which is more useful for everyone but the check-if-my-bug-is-filed group. Does that sound reasonable? Thanks for taking the time to report these bugs, and don't worry about the dupes -- it's happened to all of us, at least partially for the reasons you point out. :)
Sounds good :) I would be willing to give it a shot. Thanks
By the way this is what bugs.kde.org does - provide ten search results and ask the user to verify quickly whether the bug has already been filed.
And it turns out that this bug itself is also a duplicate.... ;-) *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 151372 ***